I'm always up for an interesting pre-Code movie, so I was happy to see last year's Summer Under the Stars on TCM include a day of the films of Anita Page. One that I hadn't seen before is Night Court.
Anita Page plays the good girl, although we don't see her for a while. Instead we first see Walter Huston, who is the judge of the titular court, Judge Moffett. As the movie opens, he's in the judge's chambers, where he's visited by Lil (Noel Baker), who is his mistress. He's not happy about her visiting at court, especially when some reporters show up to ask him about the anti-corruption committee being chaired by one of his fellow judges, Osgood (Lewis Stone). One of the reporters figures that Moffett has a visitor in his office, when when Moffett realizes the committe is being formed, he realizes that he's in trouble.
Moffett goes to Park Avenue to see Lil. He's been paying for Lil to have that nice apartment, which also has a wall safe, from which he pulls a bunch of large-denomination bills. He's obviously one of the judges on the take that Osgood is going to be investigating, and he's smart enough to know that Lil could put the finger on him, especially if she's forced to testify under oath. So he tells Lil that she's going to have to vacate the Park Avenue apartment and find some place that's cheap and where the authorities won't be able to find her.
This is where we're finally about to meet Anita Page, although we're only about 15 minutes into the movie. Lil goes to one of the less fashionable parts of town and picks a place to rent that just happens to be in the same building where Page's character lives. Page plays Mary Thomas, a young housewife and mother of an infant child married to Mike (Phillips Holmes), a taxi driver who works the night shift.
Moffett goes to visit Lil, only to find out that Osgood's detectives are smart and seem to be following Lil already. Lil isn't stupid either, and goes to see Mary to give her a sob story about a detective who is working for some sort of abusive partner with whom Lil no longer wants to be partnered. During the visit, Mary's kid pulls something out of Lil's pocketbook, which turns out to be a bank book (remember those) with a large set of figures, and Judge Moffett's name, in it. When Mary returns it to Lil, Judge Moffett realizes that he's in trouble, thinking that Mary actively knows what's going wrong when she doesn't.
At the point the movie gets really fun, if unrealistic, as Moffett has Mary framed to be the worst sort of criminal possible, resulting in her winding up in prison and Mike losing custody of the baby. How the rest of this plays out is something you're just going to have to watch Night Court to find out.
Night Court is another of those pre-Codes that has a fun if not quite plausible premise that turns into something that's more fun than it has any right to be. Poor Mike and Mary seem to have one burden after another heaped upon the in the second half of the movie. Unsurprisingly, Walter Huston is quite good as the corrupt judge. Lewis Stone doesn't have a whole lot to do, and frankly neither does Anita Page. Phillips Holmes is one of those early sound era actors whose careers didn't go quite as far as it should have, although in his case it was partly his own doing thanks to a car crash. Holmes, however, is quite good here.
Night Court is definitely worth watching, especially if you have an interest in pre-Codes.
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